The ten hour commute

On any given day on my commute into DC, its an hour and a half drive from my home in Northern Virginia to DC.

And this is on a good day.
Add accidents, broken down vehicles, or weather related and you can pretty much push it to a good two hours.

At least.

Now I have lived in this city all my life, so this is to be expected, even anticipated. But ten hours? Surely this is unheard of, even impossible right?

Wrong...think again.

They had been calling for a good amount of snow for the past week. But as most of us know in the area, you pretty much take the forecast and the weatherman that deliver it, with a grain of salt. As it was, they couldn't even tell how much we should be expecting until that very day. Which, depending on which part of the area you lived in, could be anywhere from 1 to 10 inches, in my neighborhood they were predicting 8-10. But as we looked outside on that Wednesday morning, it was doing nothing. Cloudy yes, but other than that there wasn't so much of a sprinkle hanging around.

Still, in anticipation nearly every county in the immediate area closed their schools feeling as though they better be safe than sorry. By noon, when the first sprinkle fell they announced that the federal government would be closing two hours early. They weren't the only ones, in fact most companies, including my husbands had the same idea.

Mine didn't. Still I had made a plan with my husband to come pick me up all the way from his office in Arlington VA, to my SE office and at three he left on his merry little way not knowing that this would be the start of the commute from hell.

His usual fifteen minute trip from office to office took nearly an hour to complete. But no worries, he picked me up, and we were soon on our way. Along with everyone else trying to mass exit out of the most powerful city in the world.

And of course it had begun to snow.

Our first problem was gas, having no idea it was going to take as long as it did, my husband didn't think of stopping to get some before heading out. Finding a gas station in DC is pretty impossible. Which means, we would have to wait til we get to Virginia. Great. But it was ok, we had enough to get us there, at least Andy, my husband thought so. I on the other hand?

Wasn't so confident. Looking at the never ending traffic, I was just hoping we would make into Virginia before the dial landed on E.

By 6, we finally made it past the welcome to Virginia sign and were creeping along the way. The snow was picking up, the traffic was miserable and it seemed that neither was going to be slowing down any time soon.

We were in for a long road ahead. I informed my husband at this point that we would be lucky to get home by midnight, to which he said that was impossible.

The good news, if there was any, was my mom had graciously offered to keep my nearly two year old son overnight, saving us from adding that much more time to the commute.

I don't know about you, but if your in the car for hours at end, with no end at sight, things get a little dicey between you and whoever you may be riding with. And while I would like to say we are the exception, sadly we aren't and by 7:30 pm, barely into Arlington, the frustration levels hit. We had been in the car now going on five hours. We hadn't had dinner and we had been up since before dawn. All I wanted was to get the hell out of the car, take a nice hot bath and enjoy the snowfall. From the inside of my house, and not the inside of my car.

Andy, who had been in the car a lot longer and had been maneuvering between the cars and the snow was feeling much the same. You never realize how exhausting it is just sitting there, trapped in a car can be. But it is. Every little thing seemed to make things that much worse. Including the number of cars that were piling up, being abandoned or stuck in snow.

I was worried about being the next to get stuck, or be struck by another car who was in the same position as we were. He was worried about the next exit, if there was one. About the falling branches and the power outages. Clearly no one in the area was quite ready for this. Including us. I don't think it was one of our finest nights that's for sure.Still there was no getting out of this, so we tried to make the most out of it, the Caps game was on, I had an amazing selection of music on my Ipod and our phones, had enough juice to last a while to surf the net and update status's from. Lets not forget, we planned some amazing vacations.

Though, the Caps loss two hours later, didn't help either of our moods, which is why it will not be mentioned again.

By 9:30, as the thunder snow moved above us, we were beginning to wonder if we would get home. Of course both parents had called several times by this point, proving that once their babies, always their babies. They both had suggested we find a place for the night, but with little options in sight, we decided to keep trudging along. After all we weren't the only ones stuck in the mess of it all.

I fell asleep somewhere around ten thirty, it was uncomfortable and often interrupted. My stomach was growling, my husband fuming and myself feeling the nerves wearing on me. And by eleven thirty, when we made it into Fairfax, I knew we wouldn't see the turn off into our development until Thursday morning.

I should have bet my husband.

By twelve fifteen, I was thinking a hamburger was sounding good. I can't eat beef. But at that moment I would have taken it without a complaint what so ever. As we passed the Hampton Inn, I yearned for the bed, but judging by the amount of cars I wasn't the only one and so we kept going. Surely we would be home soon enough.

The snow had stopped two hours ago, but the lightning remained. With several areas getting hit with heavy snow it created power outages, causing a rather eerie yet breathtaking sight all at the same time. We weren't the only ones on the road but without the street lights, the store lights, the snow glistened, and gleamed.

It was the first time since getting in the car that I appreciated just how powerful mother nature really is. Its the kind of beauty, we often don't think about, and don't experience with electricity so often handy these days.

Still, while the beauty was great, the car ride was getting old. I could have been halfway to Florida by now. I could have pulled in another work day by now. Florida sounded a lot better though. And beauty, couldn't hold a candle to a bed at this point.

It was one when we finally made the final turn into the neighborhood, 1:15 when we finally put the car in park and turned off the engine. Exhausted and overwhelmed we pushed our way through the ten inches of snow and made our way into the house, thankful we had power, because that would have been the icing on the cake.

We didn't care we hadn't had dinner, at that point it didn't matter anyway. We had one thing, and one thing in mind.

Sleep.

And believe me, it had never felt so good.